Required Provisions for the ForeclosureGate Deal

[autorank]

DOJ is doing a consent decree for mortgage fraud. For it to mean anything, it has to deliver justice to the people screwed out of their homes and home values. The suggestions below are just a start and serve as a reference point when evaluating the final consent decree between DOJ and the lenders/big banks.

ForeclosureGate Deal - The Mandatory Cover Up

Michael Collins


The Federal government is about to settle the ForeclosureGate affair, according to a report in the New York Times on April 9. The Times noted that twelve million homes will be lost by 2012. Home equity values are down by $5.6 trillion since the real estate crash.

The draft agreement released to American Banker shows another corporate-friendly deal designed to maintain the incumbent perpetrators at the expense of the people. (Image: zoonabar)

The proposed settlement culminates an effort by federal prosecutors to address strongly supported allegations of widespread mortgage fraud perpetrated on as many as sixty percent of current mortgage holders. Homeowners were sold mortgages, serviced for the loans, and, in some cases, subjected to foreclosure and eviction based on fictional contracts and collections practices that violate the most basic principles of contract law and specific federal code pertaining to fraudulent debt collection.

When Wall Street got massive bailouts in 2008, the ultimate rationale was, pass the bailouts or face a complete financial collapse. We are already hearing hints of a similar deep rationale in the ForeclosureGate affair.
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The Mortgage Electronic Recording System (MERS) procedures are in place in sixty million mortgages, at least. Petersen's analysis focused on the subprime market but the arguments and findings apply to every one of those sixty million mortgages. They were conceived and executed outside the law. Any US Department of Justice and the state attorneys general settlements must include the following provisions.

1) All MERS based mortgages must be declared invalid.
2) The MERS recording processes must be labeled a scheme that enabled the big banks to sell disastrous subprime mortgage backed securities.
3) MERS must also be labeled as a key player that facilitated the real estate bubble causing the purchase of inflated mortgages. .
3) The MERS system is, therefore, a misrepresentation on its face. It wasn't created to meet any need in real estate finance. MERS services operated on the basis of deliberate misrepresentation.
4) The big banks and others involved knew this was the case. They are liable for the harm caused.
5) All foreclosures conducted by MERS or in MERS name must be declared null and void.
6) The victims of those foreclosures without legal basis must be restored to the homes they lost.
7) The homeowners that were victims of MERS foreclosures and evictions should receive adequate compensation through a formula favorable to homeowners.
8) Every MERS mortgage must be readjusted to a fair market value through the most favorable formula available to homeowners.

Anything short of these remedies rewards the perpetrators at the expense of the victims.

Without these remedies, citizens are fully justified in saying that the legal system is damaged beyond any hope of repair.

http://economicpopulist.org/content/foreclosuregate-deal-mandatory-cover

Also see DonaChaidh's post ForeclosureGate Deal - The Mandatory Coverup

[Stinky The Clown]

1. Yeah! What Mikey Said!!!!

K&R

[autorank]

3. The Don approves

This is the ultimate populist issue ... make it ALL right for everybody screwed by this clearly
illegal process, without any doubt, committed by the big banks.

[EFerrari]

2. More scattered than usual: have you already written about

how HAMP greased the wheels for illegal foreclosures? And when the program didn't do well (just as it was not intended to do), they blamed consumers (again)?

But I'm forgetting that Elizabeth Warren is going to come to our rescue, right?

[autorank]

4. "Scattered"?

Warren has the solution for this but they "put her on assignment" and they're doing the deal that will negate much of what she can do, I suspect. If you look at the link to the proposed settlement in the article, it shows that it's just a slap on the wrist. Massive fraud, people evicted, driven down financially and these guys get to go to the corner with their cell phones. Geez!

[EFerrari]

5. I meant, me.

Warren said (or was made to say) publicly that farming this problem out to the states was the best way to go. Which it clearly wasn't. That was just a way to sideline the whole issue.

This is a huge win for the fraudsters. The people eat the loss of equity AND all that real estate gets grabbed. The fraud that keeps on giving.

[EFerrari]

6. This is how Amy reported it in her headline blurb today:

Regulators, Lenders Reach Deal on Foreclosure Cases

Federal regulators have reached agreements with the nation’s largest mortgage providers to address fraudulent practices in loans and foreclosures. The deals call for compensating borrowers who suffered financial harm, but no details have been worked out. Companies would also be forced to provide a single point of contact for borrowers and would not be able to foreclose on those whose loans are modified. But no concrete financial penalties would be immediately imposed, and no companies would be forced to reduce borrowers’ mortgage debt. Government officials say the deal would not undermine a separate attempt by the attorneys general from all 50 states to reach a financial settlement from lenders for submitting fraudulent documents to force thousands of people out of their homes. In a statement, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California called the deals "disappointing—but not surprising—given the history of our nation’s banking regulators."

[formercia]

7. We get fucked again: The crimes were too big to prosecute.

We can't have a distraction like this with an election coming up. Let's all look 'Forward', in other words, don't look behind you but the Banksters and their enablers in DC are about to fuck us.

Grab your ankles, complaints not allowed.

[Me.]

8. Does This Mean Anything? Really?

Does it have legs?

[snot]

9. K&R'd.